In 1946 Lucio Fontana expressed in his Manifesto Bianco his unconditional will to renew art and to transcend its traditional genres: “A change in content and form is necessary. It is necessary to overcome the limits of painting, sculpture, literature and music. We need a more comprehensive art, which corresponds to the requirements of the new spirit.” Fontana attained his revolutionary goal a few years later, by literally breaking through the plane of the canvas: in 1949–1950 he began to perforate his canvases first with holes (buchi), and then after 1955 he expanded this idea and experimented with slashes (tagli), which he carried out with a (Stanley) knife. With the motif of the opened picture surface, he directed the attention of the viewer specifically to the space behind it, and underscored the objective character of painting. In spite of the overtly violent semantic level of these works, they are characterised by well-proportioned composition and formal harmony. The effect produced by the slashes differs from canvas to canvas. In certain works, the margins of the slashes appear to protrude, while in other works, such as the present blue canvas, the painted picture surface is everted inwards by the centrally positioned slash. By means of the varied repetition of the motif in a number of different works, the act of aggression and of wounding receded, whilst the slash, as a compressed expression of sensory experience, along with Fontana’s great expressive power moved into the foreground.

“From the outset I never called the work I was doing in 1946 painting, I called it a ‘spatial concept’. This is because for me painting is a matter of ideas. The canvas served and still serves for the documentation of an idea. The things I am doing at the moment are just variations on my two fundamental ideas: the hole and the slash. At a time when people were talking about ‘planes’ – the surface plane, the depth plane etc. – making a hole was a radical gesture which broke the space on the canvas as if to say: after this we are free to do what we like. The surface cannot be confined within the edges of the canvas, it extends into the surrounding space. In this way, in these ways – well, I don’t know, because I could not survive until the year two thousand; the important thing is that we have borne witness to these demands.” (Lucio Fontana) Interview by Daniele Palazzoli, Bit, no. 5, Milan, Oct. – Nov. 1967